A Strong Performance from the British Pound

Welcome back to another report hot from the currency markets. Would the British pound have an excellent result for this week?

An overview of the currency markets for November 9th – November 13th 2015

So let’s see how things progressed this week for the British pound. It began trading on 1.5138 against the US dollar and didn’t have the best of starts as the currency dipped to 1.5090 on Monday. However, as it turned out, this would be the worst of the news we would have all week. Once the pound got over that particular day, it ended up improving day-on-day throughout the rest of the week. This meant that by Friday evening we were looking at a much more encouraging exchange rate of 1.5223.

The question now was whether we could replicate this pattern against the euro. We began on 1.3934 on Monday morning, and as things turned out we had a somewhat different pattern to look at. In this instance we managed to have three good days to start with. This took us up to 1.4164 by Wednesday evening – an improvement of 0.023 in total. Unfortunately the last two days saw us dip in fortunes, and so the pound finished on 1.4143. This was still significantly better than we had seen at the start of the week though.

Over now to Hong Kong and a starting rate of 11.734 against the Hong Kong dollar. We dipped a little on day one, dropping to 11.698 as a result, but then the pattern followed the one we had seen against the US dollar this week too. This meant we enjoyed four days of strong trading with an improvement each day. It took us to 11.799 by the time the week was over.

If you have read this report on a regular basis you will know you can never quite tell whether the New Zealand dollar and the Australian dollar will follow the pattern seen elsewhere in the world. The extremes can be dramatic too. This was shown this week with the Kiwi dollar, to be sure. The pound began on 2.2869 today, and it did not have a single bad day throughout the entire week. In fact by the time Friday night rolled around, it had put on over four cents, taking it to 2.3312 in the process.

So could it do the same against the Australian dollar as well? It started out on 2.1185 here and had three very encouraging days to begin with. This took the pound to 2.1505 by Wednesday evening. Unfortunately it couldn’t keep up with that pace and it dropped back over the final couple of days this week. That led to a closing rate of 2.1323, which was still far more encouraging than it could have been.

Notable events in the world of currency

Another good outcome against the Canadian dollar

Here too the pound was able to deliver a good result. It began trading on 1.9984 and closed things out on Friday night on 2.0255.

More of the same against the Swiss franc

The pound was certainly performing strongly in Europe, as it went from 1.5090 to 1.5254 against the Swiss currency.

Another good result against the Icelandic krona

The path here may not have been quite as smooth, but the pound was still able to rise from 196.506 overall to 198.408 this week.

As you can see, it was an encouraging week with good results coming in all round. The pound put in a strong performance and even when it could not maintain that performance throughout the entire week, it was still possible to finish in a stronger position to the one it had started in.

As we know though, there is no way of telling how long this performance would go on for. There are times when it is more difficult to see whether a currency can maintain its good standing – and times when you know it will simply not last.